02/07/2013

Syria's civil war: What a stalemate looks like

A Syrian woman stands
amid the ruins of her house which was destroyed in an airstrike by government
warplanes a few days earlier, killing 11 members of her family, in the
neighbourhood of Ansari, Aleppo, Syria. (AP
Photo/Abdullah al-Yassin)

Neither side in Syria’s civil war is winning or losing. Rebel fighters captured several Damascus
neighbourhoods for a few days but on Wednesday a government counter-offensive
took them back, The Associated Press reported.

And so the pattern goes.

Meanwhile, the head of the opposition alliance, Moaz al
Khatib today demanded on the BBC Arabic service that the regime release all female
prisoners by Sunday or he would withdraw his offer of talks. It does not mean
very much. President Bashar Assad has ignored him in the past.

So the stalemate continues.

But here is what a stalemate in a civil war looks like,
according to Dr. Anas al Kassem, a Syrian doctor I spoke to recently who
travels regularly to Aleppo with colleagues from European countries to treat
the wounded.

The
demonstrations on the streets have long vanished and it is a mechanized war of attrition
with the regime using heavy artillery in an all out assault against its people, he told me.

The shift is reflected in the kinds of injuries he sees: blast
injuries from tanks, rockets fired directly at civilians or houses crushed by
bombs dropped from fighter jets.

“When I go to Syria I say I dream about seeing a simple
gunshot wound,” he said. “But we see men who lose an abdomen wall or someone
who has a big hole in his chest because of tank fire. As surgeons, from four or five countries like
Belgium, France, Germany, we don’t know what to do. We are puzzled about how to
treat these injuries. The headlines might say 200 dead today, but there are many more
wounded and it is not easy to treat them. I estimate there are 1,000 people wounded across Syria every
day.”

My colleague Paul Watson is in Syria. Read his harrowing report on how children in Aleppo are being targetted here.

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs
reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for
more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on
Twitter @HamidaGhafour

Legal Notice

TheStar.com
Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Toronto Star or www.thestar.com. The Star is not responsible for the content or views expressed on external sites.
Distribution, transmission or republication of any material is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. For information please contact us using our webmaster form. www.thestar.com online since 1996.